Author: Elan

Experts at Africa Startup Festival have positioned that for African startups to scale sustainably, storytelling and trust must become core building blocks and not afterthoughts. During a panel session, the ecosystem leaders, speakers emphasised how narrative, transparency, and close-knit collaboration can make or break early-stage companies. While speaking about storytelling as a growth engine, Chidi Iwuchukwu, Executive Director at Rand Merchant Bank Nigeria, highlighted how compelling narratives drive early investor confidence. Read also: Equity surge lifts African Startup funding to $442m in October He cited the evolution of CBOX, now Octavia, where he explained how the company’s simple value proposition grew…

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Bitcoin’s big buyers seem to have stepped off the gas. For the better part of the last year or so, it felt like there was a constant tailwind behind Bitcoin’s price. ETFs vacuumed up coins, stablecoin balances kept climbing, and traders were willing to go to insane levels of leverage to bet on more upside. NYDIG called these the “demand engines” of the cycle in its latest report. The company argued that several of those engines have reversed course: ETFs are seeing net outflows, the stablecoin base has stalled, and futures markets look cautious. That sounds rather ominous if you…

For African writers, sharing your work to get paid on global platforms has always been a herculean task. African startups are building to solve this problem, but Storipod has a different approach, serialising the stories in the format of social media stories.  It’s a bold approach that seeks to take advantage of  increasingly short attention spans. This is the Day 1-1000 of Storipod.  Day 1: When blog posts die James Nelson has always written. In 2019, while working at Interswitch, he’d publish blog posts one week and spend the next week spamming the link everywhere. “Come read my blog. Come…

All modern web browsers support notifications, also known as push notifications. These allow websites to send, mostly text, messages using the device’s notifications system. The main idea behind notifications is to allow websites to send users information, even if the user is not on the website. However, for any website that uses notifications ethically, there are dozens that abuse the system to send advertisement or other unwanted content to users. Tip: you can also block notifications on the operating system level. I have published a guide on disabling all or specific notifications in Windows 11. Browser makers like Google or…

Accra, Ghana — Africa has the world’s youngest population. More than 60% of its 1.4 billion people are under the age of 25. By 2055, the global population is expected to reach 10 billion. Most of that growth, 95%, will happen in low-and middle-income countries. Africa alone will account for 57%. By 2050, over 60% of Africans will still be under 25, and the continent will hold the largest share of the global workforce, with 22 million young people entering the job market each year. However, learning poverty poses a challenge to this demographic. Nine out of ten children in…

** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **DEG has extended a €16.5 million long-term loan to German horticultural group Selecta One to support its expansion in East Africa through the acquisition of Wagagai, a Ugandan cutting farm. Part of the financing will be used to modernise the facility.Selecta One is a grower of bedding and container plants, perennials, grasses and cut flowers. Its customers range from large international producers to local garden centres. The group operates at 13 sites in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia.DEG has been supporting Selecta One…

Joël Sikam Interview with Joël SikamFOUNDER and CEO, FISCO INDUSTRIES Lives in: Douala, Cameroon Joël Sikam is the founder and CEO of Fisco Industries, a manufacturer of home and personal cleaning products in Cameroon. His ambition is to build Africa’s equivalent of Procter & Gamble, the American multinational behind household staples such as Ariel, Pampers and Gillette. Today, Fisco produces about four million litres of cleaning products a year and sells over 40 items across two brands: Simad, for homecare products like laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, bleach and floor cleaner; and SimPharma, for personal cleaning products such as hand sanitiser,…

National Unity Platform (NUP) presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, has vowed to champion new labour laws aimed at ensuring fair pay for factory and plantation workers, saying many labourers in Buikwe District are enduring rampant exploitation. Speaking during his rally at Butema Playground in Njeru Municipality on Wednesday, Bobi told supporters that a significant portion of Buikwe’s population works in factories and sugarcane plantations but continues to survive on meagre wages, with some labourers reportedly earning as little as Shs 3,000 per day. He promised that a future NUP-led government would prioritise workers’ rights and…

Crypto’s chronic insider trading problem is expanding from token launches to digital asset treasuries (DATs), as investors exploit early knowledge of upcoming corporate coin purchases.The issue runs deeper than a few bad actors, according to Shane Molidor, founder and CEO of the blockchain advisory firm Forgd. He described insider-style behavior as a structural feature of crypto markets, where prices often detach from fair value.A veteran of both Western and Asian trading desks, Molidor told Cointelegraph that many of crypto’s early institutions still treat regulation as an afterthought. “In the West, it’s ask permission rather than forgiveness,” he said. “In the…